Part VI: Null and Void
Yolanda Garcia x sugar baby!reader
CW: intense emotional confrontation/arguments, relationship conflict and reconciliation, guilt, crying, references to past financial distress, smut (explicit sexual content), scissoring/tribbing, soft dom!Yolanda, partially-resolved ending
WC: 4.2k
Part V
Terms and Conditions Masterlist
A/N: My tags are doing weird things so I’m sorry to anyone I missed out whose tag didn’t work!
──────── Null and Void ────────
By the time the bus crosses the Birmingham Bridge, your hands are shaking so badly that you nearly rip the stack of papers just to stop them from slipping out of your grasp.
PAID IN FULL
ZERO BALANCE
The words have been burned into the back of your eyelids for the last forty minutes.
Every pothole that the bus hits causes another wave of fury to wash over you.
Outside the window, Pittsburgh is wet underneath an overcast sky. Rows of brick buildings are streaked with rainwater, pedestrians with umbrellas hurrying along sidewalks trying to get out of what looks to be the start of a nasty storm. Normally you like the city, you like this specific bus ride across town, but today it feels like it’s taking too long.
Your knee bounces violently the entire ride.
Once, the older woman sitting across from you gives you a wary look before shuffling her purse closer to her side.
You don’t even blame her, you know how you look from the outside. You’re pissed and you look it. You’re not hurt, not emotional, furious. The kind of anger that causes steam to come out of ears in cartoons.
Because how fucking dare she?
You spent ages trying to stitch yourself back together after she ended things, after she broke them. Weeks of dragging yourself through the mud of shifts with aching ribs and an empty bank account and the humiliation of almost reaching your goals, almost having everything you ever wanted, just for her to throw you away like you were trash. Lying trash. And now this? Now you find out she’s been quietly dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars into your life like some guilty millionaire playing god from a distance?
The mortgage paperwork crinkles in your fist, the paper giving way to your angry fingers.
She doesn’t get to do this, she doesn’t get to walk away from you and still control things in your life. She doesn’t get to decide what happens to you after making it clear she didn’t want to be involved with you anymore.
The bus finally lurches to your stop and you shoulder-check someone in your effort to get off as quickly as possible.
Cold air and rain slaps you in the face immediately. You hope it’ll cool you down enough to stop you from committing a felony in the lobby of Yolanda’s building (it doesn’t).
Eight months. Eight months of Yolanda insisting on rules and boundaries and professionalism and emotional distance, only to - only to pull some shit like this the second she loses control of the situation.
You shove through the revolving doors hard enough that one of them swings too fast behind you and hits you right on the butt. And for one awful moment, looking at the inside of the lobby feels so familiar that it actually hurts you. You used to come here at least three nights a week, sometimes more.
Richard is inside tonight instead of standing outside the doorway. Not a huge surprise with the rain. “There she is,” he says as he pushes his glasses up his nose. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
You stare at him for a second, still breathing hard from anger and the slight uphill walk from the bus stop.
His forehead crinkles in confusion. “Everything okay?”
“No.” Your hands tighten instinctively, nearly crushing the paperwork. “Is she home?”
Richard hesitates just long enough to catch the look on your face. Because apparently you currently look like someone about to either start crying or kill a person, and even you aren’t sure which is more likely.
“…long day?” he offers cautiously.
You laugh, and it sounds unhinged even to your own ears. “Something like that.”
His hand reaches for the security desk phone. “Want me to call upstairs for you?”
“No,” you say quickly. “No, I’m not giving her the chance to avoid me.”
Understanding dawns across Richard’s face. Not understanding-understanding, obviously, he has no idea what actually happened between you and Ms. Garcia. But there’s enough pieces of the puzzle to understand that this is relationship business. Ugly relationship business.
“…right,” he says.
You can pretty much see him debating in his head whether or not it’s a terrible idea to let you upstairs without calling the police. But then he sighs, his shoulders slumping just a little as he makes a decision he knows could get him in trouble. “She got home maybe an hour ago.”
“Thanks,” you mutter tightly.
Richard gives you one last look of uncertainty as you stalk off toward the elevators.
The ride up feels endless, and catching yourself in the reflection in the mirrored walls looks strikingly different from the last time you took this elevator. Your hair is wet from the rain, sticking to your forehead and your face and your neck. Your jaw is clenched so tight that you can practically see the vein in your forehead about to burst from stress. You barely recognize yourself.
When you step off the elevator on Yolanda’s floor, for just a moment, another memory flashes before your eyes uninvited: Yolanda half-asleep and barefoot, opening the same door you’re staring at right now, late at night in soft gray sweatpants and that stupid white loose button-down that doesn’t even count as leisurewear. And she smiles at you, soft and unguarded in a way you were rarely ever allowed to see her.
Your heart pounds uncomfortably in your chest and you crush the feelings that memory brings with it immediately.
No, absolutely not.
You did not ride a Pittsburgh city bus across town in the rain to get sentimental. You came here furious, to demand answers. You came here because Yolanda Garcia does not get to buy her way out of guilt and call it kindness.
Your hand tightens into a fist and then you pound on her door hard enough to rattle the frame.
The door opens almost immediately, and standing there is Yolanda in lounge pants and a black long-sleeve shirt, hair damp like she’s just gotten out of the shower, and for a split second, her whole face seems to soften at the sight of you. Like she’s relieved.
But then she sees your expression and the relaxed expression disappears immediately. “What happened?”
You shove past her before she can say another word. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
Yolanda stumbles sideways in surprise as you storm into her home. The familiar smell of her coffee hits you immediately, rushing your senses like an old memory, and it only makes you angrier.
Behind you, the door clicks shut.
You whirl around to face her. “What the hell is wrong with you?” you demand.
Yolanda inches back in surprise, caught off guard by the sheer force of your anger. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, don’t do that,” you snap. “Do not stand there acting confused.” You hurl the stack of papers onto her kitchen island hard enough that one of them slides across the marble and off the countertop, coming to rest at her feet.
Her eyes follow the falling paper, catching on the PAID stamp across the bottom. And in her face, you see it: the tiniest hint of guilt. She bends down to retrieve it, and as she straightens, her expression smooths out in a way you’ve seen a thousand times before. “You took a bus across the city to scream at me?”
“You paid off my fucking mortgage!”
Yolanda folds her arms across her chest defensively. “You were drowning.”
“That’s none of your business anymore!” Your volume increases, loud enough that if you don’t stop, you know she’ll have angry neighbors.
“You were going to lose the house.”
“And?”
“And?” she repeats incredulously.
“Yes, ‘and,’” your voice continues to rise. “You made it very clear you wanted out, Yolanda! You don’t get to walk away from me and then still try to insert yourself when you feel guilty about it!”
“I do not feel guilty.” The lie is both instant and obvious.
You stare at her, then laugh once, mockingly. “Wow, that’s bullshit.”
Yolanda’s lips purse. “You think I did that because I pity you?”
“What else am I supposed to think?” you shoot back at her. “You ended things because my life was - because I was too messy for you, remember?”
“That is not why I ended things.”
“Really? Because from where I’m standing, it looked like you took one look at my situation and ran for your life.”
Yolanda’s eyes flash with anger that rivals your own now. “That is untrue and unfair.”
“Unfair?” You point violently toward the paperwork spread out across the island. “You paid off my fucking hospital bills.”
“You couldn’t afford them!”
“That doesn’t mean you get to swoop in and fix everything!”
“Somebody fucking had to!”
The apartment goes dead silent, even your own breathing stops. Yolanda freezes too, like she didn’t mean for that to come out.
Your stomach twists, and you laugh harshly, bitter and without humor. “There it is.”
Yolanda shakes her head, exasperated. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“No, I think it is.” Your voice thins, your anger fraying around the edges, though the knot doesn’t unwind. “You think I can’t handle myself, is that it?”
“You are twisting my words to make me seem like the villain.”
“And you’re acting like you can buy your way out of your feelings!” Both hands fly to either side of your head, holding your temples. “You hurt me, Yolanda! And the worst part is that I still don’t even hate you for it now.”
“You don’t?” You miss the uncharacteristically soft tone of her voice, too busy word-vomiting to hear her.
“I tried so hard to hate you,” you rant, beginning to pace her kitchen. “But I had to keep all of my anger to myself because of that stupid contract, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it! Do you know how alone I’ve felt? I blocked your number twice, and then unblocked it again just in case, I even paid some Etsy witch forty dollars to put bad energy into your life -”
“You what?”
“- and somehow you’re still in my head all of the time!”
Yolanda’s mind seems to blank at the silly revelation. “Is that why I keep losing patients..?”
Your brain doesn’t skip over that one. “I killed people?!”
“You paid someone to curse me.”
“That’s not the point,” you argue, pointing at her before she can say another word. “Do not derail me right now.”
But Yolanda is still staring at you in disbelief. “Oh my god.”
“Stop focusing on the witch!”
“I’m trying, but you’re making it hard!”
“You don’t get to swoop in and save me anymore.” Your voice drops to a whisper, the flame that was your anger fizzling out. “You can’t reject me and then still treat me like I belong to you.”
“You do not belong to me.”
“You’re acting like I do!” you insist, your tone almost pleading. “I didn’t as you for this.” You gesture toward the papers.
“I know you didn’t!” Yolanda suddenly yells, the force startling both of you. “Jesus Christ, I know you didn’t ask!”
The kitchen falls silent again.
Yolanda drags a hand over her hair, her control over even herself wavering in a way you’ve never seen from her before. “That’s the problem,” she says. “You never ask for anything.”
You stare at her. “Are you serious? The problem is that I’m not greedy enough for you?”
She begins to pace now, too, as if your roles have swapped. “Do you know what it was like when I found out?” she demands. “Learning that you weren’t spending any of what I gave you on yourself? Realizing that you were probably rationing groceries while sleeping in my bed?”
Shame courses through you, hot like fire. “Don’t.”
“No, because apparently nobody in your life loves you enough to say it to you!” she snaps. “You act like needing help is some kind of failure.”
You scoff. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“I ended things because I thought I was taking advantage of someone who was desperate.”
“You weren’t taking advantage of me!”
“Well how the hell was I supposed to know that? You never told me!” Yolanda laughs bitterly. “Do you know what I’ve been doing over the last couple of months?”
“Apparently committing white-collar financial crimes, how did you even get the information to pay these bills?”
“Obsessing over you,” she shoots back, ignoring your question. The dam cracks, and despite her visible annoyance over her own confession, she keeps going. “I try to sleep and I wonder if you’re cold because your heat’s been shut off. I’m at work wondering if you’re ignoring your ribs hurting because you can’t afford another hospital bill.” Her voice roughens. “I pick up a stranger in a bar,” she hisses, “and say your fucking name with her mouth between my legs.”
Your breath catches in your throat and you try not to look hurt at the humiliation.
Yolanda’s eyes are sharp as they lock onto yours. “Do you understand how humiliating that is?” She circles the island toward you slowly. “This isn’t guilt,” she spits. “If it were just guilt, it would’ve gone away already.”
Your heartbeat is hammering in your neck as she approaches. “Yolanda -”
“And the worst part is, you still won’t ask me for anything,” she cuts you off. “You would rather drown than need someone else, and you say I’m emotionally stunted.”
“That is not true.” You glare at her as she reaches you.
“Then ask me for something.”
You blink rapidly. “What?”
“Ask me for something,” Yolanda repeats. The intensity of her stare nearly has you withering. A few months ago, it would have. “Anything you want, anything at all. Just ask.”
Your throat is suddenly tight and dry with the weight of her demand, because the implication of what she’s saying is impossible to misunderstand.
Ask for me.
“I can’t,” you whisper as your eyes begin to burn. “You can’t ask that of me.”
She’s so close that you’re almost nose-to-nose, and you don’t miss the confusion that flickers across her face. “Why not?”
You huff and look away, like a wounded animal. “Because you don’t get to put me through all of this and then make demands.”
Yolanda’s breath is not on your face as she sighs through her nose. “I’m standing here, telling you that I will give you anything you ask of me.”
“After you left.”
You can see on her face how deeply your words register with her in the way that her expression hardens: the softness of her mouth pulls down into a frown, the way that her eyebrows draw together.
“What am I supposed to do, Yolanda?” Your voice shakes so badly with the thread of unshed tears that you’re forced to whisper. “Beg you to stay this time? How would I even know you mean it?”
Yolanda stands there unresponsive for a moment, her eyes trained on you as she considers her words carefully before deciding to say them: “Let me prove it to you.”
Silence follows because you don’t know what to say, and she uses that to continue.
“I know I can’t undo what I did,” she says. “I can’t take it back. But I am telling you right now that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since.” Her eyes search your own. “But I need you…I need you to ask.”
You take a shaky breath, searching her face for any insincerity, anything that she could use against you, any trace of the woman you spent eight months with.
When you don’t find it, you let the breath out.
“Yolanda,” you start, completely unsure of how to even ask. “Please -”
That’s it. Surrender. The trust you offer her blindly, without being sure she won’t hurt you again.
Yolanda doesn’t let you finish whatever you were going to say next. Both of her hands fly to your jaw, tilting your head at the exact right angle to kiss you. You make a sound against her mouth and it tastes like relief, disappearing into her like she’s been waiting too long to hear it.
Her lips are warm against your own, and insistent as they guide your mouth open so she can slip her tongue inside your mouth. You clutch at her shirt where it bunches around her waist, refusing to let go even as she pulls you blindly toward the hallway that leads to her bedroom.
You can’t open your eyes once you reach the bedroom, worried that once you do, the spell will be broken and you’ll feel the hurt once more.
Her hands slide down your body, mapping your skin like she’s memorizing you anew until she reaches the hem of your shirt, pulling it up and off your body. Cool air hits your skin for only a second before her hands replace it, still hot from her shower, sliding up your ribs to cup your breasts.
You gasp into her mouth. She groans in response, her thumbs brushing over your nipples until they harden under her touch.
“So fucking perfect,” she mumbles, breaking away from your mouth so she can trail her lips down your throat and over your collarbones. “Missed this so much, missed you.”
Clothes come off in a stumbling haze, both yours and hers. Her shirt hits the floor, then your pants, and by the time you actually reach the bed, you’re both naked. The sight of her body stops you in your tracks, her skin glowing in the low light that’s barely tricking in from the nearly-set sun, her curls still slightly damp but not dripping but a stray droplet here and there, which trails between her breasts without a thought of what it does to you. She’s beautiful. She always has been, but your memory of her these last few months pales in comparison.
Yolanda doesn’t give you time to overthink this. She guides you down onto your back on the mattress, crawling over you until her hair tickles your cheek. The heat of her body sinks into yours as she lays flush against you, your breasts brushing and her hips settling between your thighs.
You whine at the contact. Reaching blindly toward the nightstand next to her bed, you’re surprised when her hand catches your wrist, stopping you.
“Not tonight,” she mumbles against the skin at the valley of your breasts. “Need to feel you against me.”
She sits up and hooks one of your legs over her hip, rolling you slightly to align your bodies until your slick heat meets her own. The first glide of her folds against your own pulls a moan from your throat, head tilting back against her pillow. She’s soaked, burning hot, and the feeling of her wet skin against your clit makes your back arch.
Yolanda sets a slow, grinding rhythm, one hand braced beside your head while the other grips your thigh, holding your legs open for her. Each roll of her hips into your own sends sparks up your spine and you lift your hips to meet her, to match her rhythm. You can feel everything: her wetness coating you, the way her clit rubs against your own when she gets the angle just right.
“Look at me,” she demands, softly and without malice.
You do, your eyes opening as you lift up onto your elbows. Her dark eyes are locked on your own, curls falling against her face like a halo, her lips parted as she visibly pants.
There’s no emotional wall this time, and how could there be? Not once in the entire time you spent together was she ever skin-to-skin with you like this, like it was a vulnerability she couldn’t afford.
You rock up to meet her, desperately chasing the friction that stokes the fire in your belly. Your hands roam her back, pulling her down against you, forcing her back to bow to keep up the slide of her slick against yours. Your nails lightly scratch against her skin and she growls - like, actually growls - at the feeling, and it only fuels her to grind down harder against you.
“Fuck - Yolanda -” You bury your face in her neck, mouth latching onto the pulse point in her neck so hard you know it’ll leave a mark. And you revel in the way she doesn’t pull you away, the way she would’ve in the past, with a stern warning to “not leave marks where anyone could see.” Just the thought that she’s allowing you to mark her has the pleasure coiling tighter and tighter in your core.
“I’ve got you,” she rasps, shifting her angle so her clit drags over yours just right with every thrust. “Let go, baby, I’m not going anywhere.”
The newness of his feeling, of her truly here, skin to skin, open and vulnerable and heart cracked open, is the final straw that sends you over the edge. Your orgasm crashes over you in waves, your thighs shaking around her as you cry out against her neck.
Yolanda follows seconds later, her own hips stuttering and a low and guttural moan vibrating through her chest as she grinds through her own release. Her slick heat pulses against you, and you have no idea if it’s your own slick or hers that coats both of your thighs.
You stay locked together afterwards, trembling and breathing hard. Yolanda collapses on top of you, tucking her face into the crook of your neck, legs tangled between yours. Your fingertips stroke over her back in slow passes, soothing the rapid thud of her heart against your own.
After a long minute, she moves, sliding just enough off you to grab at the water bottle on the nightstand, offering it to you first. Knowing how thirsty you always are right after sex. When she catches your eyebrow quirking up, she shrugs. “Old habits die hard.”
You take it, sipping the water while coherent thoughts come racing back in. But it isn’t until you’ve handed the water back to Yolanda and she’s getting her fill that you actually speak.
“Yolanda,” you say quietly.
The tone of your voice has her pausing, capping the bottle so she can look at you.
You swallow hard. “I don’t know what this is now.”
She finishes screwing the lid on. “What do you want it to be?”
You’re surprised at the question, which feels more like an offer. “I - I can’t -” You can’t finish the thought, but you don’t have to. She knows.
I can’t ask for this.
Yolanda takes a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling while she does so, like she’s centering herself. “I can’t promise that I’m going to do this perfectly,” she says softly. “Or that I’m going to be exactly what you need right away.”
Right away.
Your eyes lift at the same time she looks down at you. She holds your gaze like she’s forcing herself not to look away. And she probably is.
“But I am here,” she goes on. “And I’m trying. And I…I’m not leaving you again just because I don’t know how to do it right yet.”
Yet.
You sit up to meet her, to be at the same level. To avoid her looking down at you, both metaphorically and literally. “I don’t know if I can do this again,” you admit. “I don’t know if I could survive it.”
Yolanda sets the water bottle on the bedside table again, and then settles back next to you on the bed. “I meant what I said,” she says. “I want to prove it. I just…don’t know exactly how to do that yet.”
A long silence settles after that, one you don’t break with continuing a discussion that won’t be solved tonight.
The only surefire thing you know right now is that this is not how you expected this to go, but you’d be lying if you said the weight on your chest that’s been following you since that day in the hospital, the dark cloud that’s been following you ever since, isn’t lifting just a little.
Because Yolanda is here, accepting you for you, and not what you can offer her, or what she can offer you. And you know that there will be a bigger conversation, about privacy, and about what this means for you two and what the future holds. But right now, as you both lay back down in her massive mattress, pressed up against each other in a way that the available space doesn’t require, it feels like everything is going to be okay.
For once, it’ll be okay.
──────── Null and Void ────────
Part VII
Terms and Conditions Masterlist
Enjoy this? Check out my Masterlist.
──────── Null and Void ────────
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